We've got to hand it to this Brazilian cancer organization: Having a huge testicle as a mascot is pretty ballsy.
"Senhor Testiculo" (aka "Mr. Testicle" or "Mr. Balls"), recently made a very public appearance at an event run by the Associação de Assistência às Pessoas in Viçosa, Brazil. The mascot, which is literally a huge pair of testicles, appears quite cheerful in the numerous pictures from the event. (Just goes to show, you don't have to be testy to represent testicular cancer.)
Gawker's Max Rivlin-Nadler writes that it's hard to pinpoint what's most bizarre about the testicular cancer mascot:
"Is it the pubic hair that is so off-putting or the buckteeth? Definitely the buckteeth," Rivlin-Nadler notes. "Or maybe it's the bowl-cut. God, he (it?) is disturbing."
No word on whether Senhor Testiculo has reached out to “Scrotie,” the giant penis that sometimes serves as the Rhode Island School of Design’s unofficial mascot.
But all jokes aside, there's nothing funny about testicular cancer, which kills several hundred men in the United States every year.
"The rate of testicular cancer has been increasing in the United States and many other countries," according to the American Cancer Society. "The increase is mostly in seminomas. Experts have not been able to find reasons for this increase. Lately, the rate of increase has slowed."
The good news is it also has the "highest survival rate of any solid tumor," said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, according to HealthDay News.
Symptoms of testicular cancer include an enlarged testicle and a lump on the testicle, with one known risk factor being the presence of an undescended testicle, the outlet notes.
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